


His Eminence

by Britpacker



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Inevitable Spoilers, Political Intrigue, Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They really thought they had him this time.  One word to the King and the Musketeers’ victory would be complete. They forgot one important thing; exactly who they were dealing with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Eminence

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a sequel to my fic "Mutually Assured Destruction" and written from the same premise; that actually the Cardinal holds a pretty strong hand if he's smart enough to play it properly. I'm working on another story that will see him do exactly that, by the way!

“The matter is closed, Captain.” Perched on the edge of the throne, King Louis XIII had more the air of a petulant child being interrogated about a missing apple than the master of a kingdom. If he hadn’t known better, d’Artagnan would have said the man was absolutely terrified.

“But Sire it’s clear the plot against the Queen’s life went to the very heart of the court!” Treville was the most honest man in France, which all too often was a disadvantage in this particular part of it. The King bit his lip, the smallest throb of a vein becoming evident at his temple.

“The matter is closed, I said!” 

“But Your Majesty, the Cardinal…”

As if he had been struck Louis reared out of his seat, his habitually pasty face mottling with crimson splotches. “The Cardinal is my most obedient servant!” he roared, and all five men before him rocked back on their heels, unprepared to withstand this unlikeliest tempest. “My lightest word is his command! A word against him is a word against _Us_ and I’ll thank you, Captain, to remember that!”

Silence. D’Artagnan had never realised before how heavy it could be until it crashed down onto his head. “You are dismissed,” the King grunted, subsiding back into his seat without looking at the stricken officers. “I said, you are DISMISSED!”

“Your Majesty.” Too stunned to propel himself, Treville allowed Athos’s gentle push to start him into motion, trusting the others to fall into step in his wake with spinning heads and downcast eyes. 

The Audience Chamber was vast but crossing it had never seemed to take so long. “He’s frightened,” Athos hissed, gripping his commanding officer by the arm as the doors were swung wide. “But why would he….”

“Gentlemen.” Swathed in the great black cloak that always made him look so much burlier than his reed-slim frame should allow, Cardinal Richelieu leaned against the wall opposite, arms loosely folded across his chest and the faintest trace of a mocking smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “I imagine you have questions for me.”

Treville stopped dead. For a long, silent moment he stared at his chief antagonist, his balled hands clenched at his sides. A muscle twitched uncontrollably in his jaw. “I think not, Your Eminence,” he said eventually, injecting so much ice into the title d’Artagnan felt it as a physical blow. “I think the King has just answered any _question_ I might have had.”

“Bravo.” Languid as a large cat before a roaring fire Richelieu pushed himself off the wall and gave two sharp, sardonic handclaps. “I always knew you were more intelligent than you look. What a pity your subordinates can’t match you! Close your mouth Athos, someone might assume we’re harbouring a fugitive from the local asylum.”

“The King.” The whole weight of the palace caved in on him. D’Artagnan stared wildly from one stricken friend to the next, watching realisation freeze each face in turn. “The King already knows it was you!”

With the flick of one long, elegant hand Richelieu started them down the empty corridor, the clatter of their footsteps echoing ominously back from the exuberantly painted ceiling. “Suspects, perhaps,” he said carelessly, ushering them into the sparsely furnished set of chambers kept for his use, unnervingly close to the King’s own and dismissing his sentry with a curt nod. “And with good cause. His Majesty’s wish, as you really ought to know, is his first minister’s command.”

His head was spinning so badly d’Artagnan felt faintly sick. “He wouldn’t,” he muttered, ignoring as best he could the sceptical grunt from his right that implied Porthos might be of a different opinion. “When he heard….”

“The wine; or the heat; or both!” Treville burst out furiously.

“It’s all right, Captain.” In spite of himself Athos managed to sound sufficiently authoritative that Treville was stopped in his tracks. “It will all come out during the investigation, I’m sure.”

“Investigation, you really are as stupid as you look!” Richelieu marvelled. D’Artagnan caught his breath, numbed by the sudden, sickening realisation. This man – cold, calculating, utterly devoid of compassion – was toying with them. Daring them to strike against him.

“There’ll be no inquiry, Athos.” Wearily Treville drew a hand across his stinging eyes. “The King knows what was done, and whether he intended it or not he’ll never have it publicly proclaimed. How could he?”

“He doesn’t have to say…”

Even as the protest squeaked from his throat d’Artagnan knew how naïve it sounded. The Cardinal’s right eyebrow arched. Porthos, always less restrained, didn’t even try to smother his guffaw.

“Yeah, ‘cause we know the King’s going to lie if _he_ asks, right?” he muttered, fixing the impassive priest with a slitted stare. Richelieu smirked.

“The King knows I would never act unilaterally in so _sensitive_ a matter,” he purred serenely, knowing as well as any of the men before him that Louis was a pathetic weakling whose feeble protestations of innocence would crumble when challenged by a stronger will. 

“It’s not true!” Aramis could hold still no longer, bursting forward to confront the older man with bristling fury. “The King wouldn’t harm a fly, still less the Queen! I _can’t_ believe he’d ever suggest…”

“Your colleagues can.” Even with the outraged musketeer lunging into his personal space the Cardinal didn’t flinch, his air of effortless superiority undented. “The Queen doesn’t doubt it. If she could imagine him wishing her dead before, well now… had he reason to doubt the paternity of her child, what then, I wonder?”

Treville’s hand moved to grip his sword hilt. “Baseless slander!” he hissed, rocking onto the balls of his feet. Richelieu arched that mocking eyebrow at him.

“Is it?” he drawled, seemingly the only man in the room with sufficient air to breathe. D’Artagnan could feel his chest tightening, his lungs beginning to burn. Time slowed down. He would have sworn, if asked, he could hear the slow, steady thump of his own heart bursting out of his chest.

“You don’t know, what a pity, and I know you pride yourself on being the honorary godfather of all the regiment’s bastards.” For a devilish pragmatist Richelieu played seraphic innocence all too well; the ease of ample practise, the Gascon couldn’t help but consider even as the blood drained from his brain leaving him light-headed and breathless against comprehension’s slow, sickly seep.

The same awful sensation seemed to be afflicting his commanding officer. His heel squeaking against the bare slab stone floor Treville turned bodily to face his men. “Aramis?” he croaked. “ _Athos_?”

It was almost a plea. “I’m sorry, Captain,” Athos muttered, as hangdog as if he were the principal offender.

From slowing down, time sped dramatically up. Before d’Artagnan’s mind had time to register what was happening Treville was surging forward with arm drawn back and fist clenched; Aramis’s head snapped back, the force of his captain’s blow sending him staggering backward into the wall with the burlier form of Treville springing like a panther in pursuit.

On instinct d’Artagnan threw himself into the fray, grabbing at the older man’s clothing while Porthos hurtled in from the other side, swearing furiously. Only Athos remained aloof, staring beyond the scrum to the tall, impassive figure that had provoked it. “How did you know?” he said.

The quiet question snapped Treville back to his senses. Shaking of the clawing hands of his men he stumbled backward, keeping his eyes anywhere but the bloodied face of the man slumped against the wall; the one man, d’Artagnan realised belatedly, who had done nothing to stop his frenzied assault. 

“Really Treville, the King’s toy soldiers brawling like street urchins, what would Their Majesties say?” Richelieu cooed, so unutterably smug the Gascon had to curl his itching fingers into his hands against the irreligious urge to strike a priest. “You don’t deny it, then? You have committed treason; and the child the King’s so eager to proclaim his heir might very well be a musketeer’s bastard instead!”

Dabbing the blood from his already-swelling lip, Aramis could only repeat his friend’s question. “How did you know?”

“I’ve had my suspicions for some time; ever since I saw a rather familiar cross around the Comtesse de Larroque’s neck at her trial.” Hip butting against the corner of his desk, long arms folded loosely across his chest, Richelieu regarded his crestfallen enemies with that signature mix of contempt and calculation Treville mistrusted most. “Oh I assumed it was a token of support from the Queen at first, but then Captain Trudeau reported that you handed it to her in the monastery cloister.” 

He paused for a moment, letting the enormity of what he implied sink in before continuing. “And unless you stole it – which of course you wouldn’t, you’re a musketeer and they’re renowned for their integrity, aren’t they? – the Queen must have given the first gift she ever had from her husband to another man of her own free will.”

“Many women have crosses on chains,” Athos suggested, not very convincingly. Richelieu treated him to a withering look.

“I presented it on the King’s behalf the moment she first set foot on French soil. I recognised it immediately; and if you’d care to ask him, I’m sure His Majesty would be happy to identify it himself. You _are_ still wearing it, I presume?”

Aramis raised his head and looked the taller man in the eye. “I am.”

“How very _gallant_ of you.”

Aramis cupped a protective hand around his mistress’s token. “The child may not be mine,” he muttered. “The King went to her apartments the night we returned.”

“And complained to me the next morning that even at such a moment she still recoiled from his touch, but it makes no odds. Adultery in a queen is treason. Were the King to discover...”

“I won't lie.”

“Concern for your immortal soul, how touching! I’m sure the hangman will be suitably impressed.” Obviously less so, the Cardinal treated his companions to another aggravating smirk. Treville growled ominously.

“You admit there’s a chance the child’s the King’s,” he tried, then immediately grimaced as if he wished he hadn’t.

He was hardly, d’Artagnan gathered, alone. Richelieu sniffed derisively.

“Tell that to the mob! Come now, you can walk the streets unnoticed as I can’t; surely you’ve heard the scurrilous rhymes sung about King Louis and his _unshotted pistol_! Half of Paris is already convinced the child’s a bastard, but don’t worry; I’m sure the gallant musketeer will be seen as the naïve victim of a Spanish plot to protect their Infanta’s hold on the throne.”

“There was no premeditation...”

Richelieu stopped the protest with an imperious lift of the hand. “Oh, I’m sure there wasn’t. I doubt either party’s capable of that level of calculation but the fact remains: the King’s a cuckold and a soldier’s brat threatens to divert the legitimate succession. And if you think for a moment, Musketeer, that I’ll allow it – well, do your worst. The wild accusations of a traitor and an unfaithful Queen won’t save you, or your tainted regiment!”

“No.” No need, d’Artagnan sensed, for anyone to say it. His triumph was complete and the Cardinal intended to savour it, protected by both his master’s unwitting complicity in his own crime and the possession of a secret so terrible it could destroy the few who might dare to challenge him. While seeking justice against him the Musketeers themselves have made him invulnerable, and he knew it.

“What,” Treville gritted between his teeth, “do you suggest?”

The Cardinal paused for a moment, arching through a lazy stretch that pulled him up to his full height. “That, painful as it must be for all parties – we collaborate,” he said simply.

“If you harm that child…”

“Your bastard is of little interest to me; unless it should be male and your mistress attempts to place it on the throne.” Beneath so much scorn even Aramis wilted, but d’Artagnan felt a sudden, ridiculous flaring of hope. 

“If the child’s a girl,” he ventured. Richelieu’s shoulders rolled through an eloquent shrug.

“The Salic Law means she’d be irrelevant to the succession; let the Queen raise her as a Daughter of France, her marriage might be useful to us one day,” he said dismissively. Athos cleared his throat.

“A son…”

Penetrating grey eyes frosted with pure ice speared through him. “I’ll hang before I see a bastard proclaimed Dauphin of France, but don’t get your hopes up – I’ll see you all broken on the wheel and the Queen incarcerated in a convent first.”

“He can do it, too.”

“Shut up, Porthos, we know.” Athos stepped forward, between his furious friends and the enemy they had to placate. “But why don’t you?”

“Because the price would be the King’s humiliation, and a humiliated Louis means a weakened, humiliated France.” Explaining statecraft to these men was pointless, Richelieu’s tone implied. “And while war is inevitable someday, I’d sooner it come at a point of France’s choosing than now, before we’re prepared and as a diversion from Spain’s internal troubles. She may be disgraced but would King Philip stand aside and see his sister removed from her throne? No Spaniard could stomach it!”

D’Artagnan opened his mouth to question, but Athos quelled him with a glance. “You have a suggestion?” he asked coldly.

“Not yet.” Really it was too much for everyone to expect miracles of him at a moment’s notice; even a Cardinal must pray for intercession of that nature. “We’ll need the Queen’s help; and if the birth can occur away from Paris, with the usual officials still hurrying to reach the chamber, it would be helpful…”

“Like Marie de Medici,” Treville observed, meeting Richelieu’s eyes for the first time.

For a brief moment, d’Artagnan thought he saw a glimmer of understanding – if not friendship, at least fellow-feeling - between the two old adversaries.

“We’ll delay the officials,” Porthos volunteered, glad of something practical to do. “But somebody’s got to witness the birth; and she’ll need a midwife.”

“I’ll attend to that.” Their relief was palpable and Richelieu’s confidence rose higher in seeing it. Not content with making his position unassailable, they seemed determined to guarantee their own total subjugation. 

A few weeks ago he had been in terror of these pathetic creatures; now they grovelled at his feet. “Do we have an agreement, gentlemen?” he asked, exultation making him almost civil.

Four heads jerked. “Yes,” Treville affirmed tiredly. “Your Eminence.”

The familiar title was no longer a courtesy, Richelieu realised, triumph flooding him until he felt almost giddy. It was an irreversible statement of fact.


End file.
